While many of us recognize the name Holy City, the fascinating story of the former mountain community and the eccentric character who founded it has largely been forgotten.
Holy City was built over a period of several years beginning in 1919 by a charismatic cult leader who called himself “Father” William Riker. He was born in Oakdale, California in 1873 and moved to San Francisco as a young man.
In his mid-30s, after claiming that he had a “divine revelation,” he began referring to himself as “The Comforter” and started recruiting gullible followers as his religious disciples.
In 1915, he established his “Perfect Christian Divine Way” in a house on Hayes Street where he lived with seven married women who he convinced to abandon their families. It’s where he was charged—but never convicted—of running a sex cult.
After persuading his followers to sign over all their possessions and property so that they could free themselves from worldly concerns, Riker left the city and used the proceeds to purchase 142 acres of land on the Glenwood Highway—the only paved road between San Jose and Santa Cruz at the time—where he established the “Headquarters of the World’s Most Perfect Government.”
To lure tourists (and potential converts), Riker built a service station, restaurant, dance hall, and observatory. There were peep shows for men, a soda fountain that served carbonated alcoholic beverages during prohibition, and a small zoo with monkeys to appeal to families with children.
Other eclectic roadside attractions included nine giant Santa Claus statues. The town eventually had its own post office and a radio station with the questionable call letters KFQU.
Billboards extolled the merits of Riker’s “Perfect Christian Divine Way.” Some contained anti-government slogans while others were blatantly racist and sexist. Many of the buildings were covered in placards with sayings such as: “Our California Belongs Only To The White Race Man”.
Riker was an avowed white supremacist. In the 1930s, he wrote a series of letters to Adolf Hitler, addressing him as “Your Excellency” and offering to help him become “the greatest character that has ever lived since the time of Jesus Christ.”
In 1942, when he was apprehended by the FBI for distributing pamphlets to soldiers calling for the US to abandon the fight against Germany, he was arrested and tried for treason.
His attorney, the up-and-coming Melvin Belli, secured his acquittal but Riker refused to pay him and filed a defamation of character lawsuit against his attorney for repeatedly referring to him as a “harmless crackpot” during his defense. The suit was dismissed and Belli was eventually paid.
Riker became increasingly delusional. He claimed to have found the cure for cancer, heart failure, and all other ailments, offering $10,000 to “anybody who can find a flaw in my 100% arguments.” He ran for Governor three times but no one paid much attention to his racially-charged rhetoric.
Holy City fell into decline in the 1940s as the new Highway 17 bypassed the town. Most of it burned to the ground in the 1950s in a fire of questionable origin. “Father” RIker died there in 1969 at age 96 after converting to Catholicism, bringing to an end the strange saga of Holy City.
Alan Feinberg is a local historian and founder of the LOST Gatos Project. His mission is to generate enthusiasm among Los Gatos residents for remembering and preserving our town’s unique character and historic treasures before they’re lost forever. For more Los Gatos history, download the free mobile app Discover LOST Gatos and take a self-guided walking tour through our historic downtown.
